The heads of the member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will have an urgently convened summit this Friday, February 25, to analyze the situation in Ukraine and the invasion of Russia.
In the meeting, which will be by videoconference, the military, political and economic measures linked to what is happening in Eastern Europe will be discussed.
The meeting is considered key in the conflict since on Thursday, Joe Biden, president of the United States, said that the country will not intervene directly by sending troops, which was good for the markets (which stopped the fall), but not it was well received by Ukraine.
Its president, former comic actor Volodymyr Zelensky, said after Biden’s remarks: “NATO left us alone.”
NATO is a military alliance made up of European countries and the United States. It was born after World War II with the idea of preventing Soviet expansion after the fall of Nazi Germany. Over the years, contrary to what Russia expected after the dissolution of the USSR, NATO added countries from the initial 12 and today it is made up of 29 nations.
The alleged integration of Ukraine into NATO is one of the main reasons for the conflict with Russia.
NATO’s idea at this Friday’s meeting is to take “additional steps” to strengthen “defenses across the alliance.” “Our measures will be preventive, proportionate and non-scalable,” says the text of the call for the meeting that will not be face-to-face.
“NATO does not have troops in Ukraine nor does it have a plan to deploy soldiers in that country,” said the secretary general of that alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, this Friday from Belgium.
The emergency summit via NATO Zoom takes place after the head of the French Executive, Emmanuel Macron, demanded a day before that the alliance meet “as quickly as possible” due to the offensive ordered by the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spoke along the same lines.
🇺🇦🇷🇺 | UKRAINE-RUSSIA WAR: Zelensky: “I stay in Kiev with my people, as well as my family. Ukraine is alone. They don’t want us in NATO. Nobody wants to fight for us. I am grateful to all countries that provide real help, not just moral support.”
— Alert News 24 (@AlertaNews24) February 24, 2022
NATO defines what it does in a Zoom meeting
The countries of the European Union (EU), among other things, fear a heightened refugee crisis due to an extended war in Ukraine.
“Russia bears full responsibility for these acts of aggression and the destruction and human loss that they entail. They will pay for their actions,” the EU said in a parallel statement to NATO’s.
Hours earlier, Biden said: “President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will result in the loss of numerous lives and human suffering. Russia is solely responsible for the deaths and destruction that these attacks will cause.”
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